Andrews, J. and Fay, R. (University of Manchester), Researchers as mediators: languaging and culturing when researching multilingually. Paper presented at the 16th IALIC Conference, “Bridging across languages and cultures in everyday life: new roles for changing scenarios”, hosted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, November 25th-27th, 2016.

1. Researchers as mediators: languaging and
culturing when researching multilingually
(IALIC 2016, November 25th-27th 2016)
Jane Andrews & Richard Fay
on behalf of the RMTC Hub (esp. Prue Holmes and Mariam Attia) of the
Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State
project (AHRC) (AH/L006936/1)
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/

2. Some Background
1. Researching Multilingually …. focusing on researcher thinking (e.g. the
thinking of doctoral students and supervisors) about their practices with
regard to the possibilities for, and complexities of, using multiple
languages in any of the many aspects of research (design, engagement with
literature, ethics, fieldwork, data generation and analysis, reports,
dissemination, etc)
2. Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law
and the State …. an explicitly multi inter-disciplinary exploration –
with the creative arts embedded throughout - of what it means to
language and be languaged - esp. in contexts of pain, pressure, precarity
ADDED: multiple languages  languaging
multi-  inter-disciplinarity
+ creative & performative arts …..
+ borders (of all kinds)
+ pain, pressure, precarity

3. Two over-arching aims:
1. to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practices in challenging
contexts;
2. while doing so, to document, describe and evaluate appropriate research
methods (traditional and arts-based) and develop theoretical approaches for
this type of academic exploration.
PI discourse/questioning
• What difference does your language make to your life, safety, well-being?
• How many ways might your life and stories be translated and be represented
by others?
• With what kind of power and ethics?
• ‘What does it mean to be languaged in today’s world?’
• Languaged/ing under Pain and Pressure.
• Troubling the cult of English/monolingually masked research.
RM-ly @ Borders: Aims

4. 1. Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender
Based Trauma - Scotland/Uganda (Sierra Leone)
2. Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal
process - UK/Netherlands
3. State: Working and Researching Multilingually at State
and EU borders - Bulgaria/Romania
4. Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American Southwest
borderlands - Arizona
5. Language Education: Teaching Arabic to Speakers of
Other Languages - Gaza
+ Creative Arts Hub
+ Researching Multilingually Hub (applied linguistics)
Five Case Studies + Two Hubs

5. Hotspot – Linguistic Preparation
Hotspots ‘hotspots’ (or resonant moments and ideas) …. “our developing insights
and curiosities do not always arise neatly from specific encounters, engagements,
and experiences, but often emerge from individually-felt project experiences …”
• The “Researchers’ Linguistic Preparation for Fieldwork” hotspot ….
• … emerged from insights/experiences/thinking arising from engagement
(more or less concurrently) with ….
 Case Study 1 - Global Mental Health, northern Uganda
 Case Study 3 - Anthropology, Bulgaria and Romania
BAAL 2015 paper: “Revisiting linguistic preparation: some new directions
arising from researching multilingually” (Fay, Andrews, Holmes and Attia)

6. Hotspot Genesis
Robert (CS3)
English + fluent foreign language user; anthropological disciplinary habits; seeks
native-approximating encoding and decoding performance
Julien (CS3)
Bi-lingual and foreign language user; multil-lingual political science habits; seeks
native-like “passing” (ERASMUS experience now being problematised)
[bi-lingual English-French researcher collaboration]
Ross (CS1)
English user ‘shy’ about FL capacity; largely English-medium access to linguistically-
complex research sites (where English plays a role); disciplinary habits towards
English (despite linguistic focus of his research project)
Me  Uganda, Lira, Lango etc

7. Language Learning and Ethnographic Fieldwork
1. For many researchers, learning a new language or working in a second or
additional language is a crucial aspect of … ethnographic fieldwork.
2. Language learning … affect … all aspects of our lives 'in the field', as well
as the analysis and ‘writing up’ of the fieldwork data, but we often do not
document these influences in detail in our fieldnotes or include an
analysis of their effects in our published work.
3. Whilst we might have completed some language learning prior to
fieldwork, the likelihood is that we were not taught … how to reflect on
the process of language learning or on issues relate to working in one or
more other languages.
4. These matters are also rarely addressed in the scholarly literature on
ethnographic research ….

8. Passing for a ‘native’ Romanian speaker
1. … my desire to pass for a native speaker became little by little a sort of
respect towards those people I met that had a different life to mine for
reasons that I would not consider valid. …
2. [because of] this need … for myself to have an excellent command of
Romanian I had the opportunity to be a bit more ‘in the know’.
3. It is only now, since I have been reflecting upon my relationship to
languages in general and to Romanian in particular that I look at it with
some distance. …
4. Colleagues in the project have told me about the ‘myth of the native
speaker’ and have seen in those reactions I was mentioning a kind of
“language activism”.
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/?p=766

9. Researching context-sensitive psycho-social
interventions (1)
• Case Study 1 (Lira, Uganda): To assist with developing contextually
sensitive psychosocial interventions for the Lango-speaking people living in
the Lira district
• Linguistic Preparation …. for 2-weeks in Uganda – English? KiSwahili?
Luganda? Lango? Acholi?
• Linguistic Preparation …. for relational aspects supporting the research
rather than for the research itself
• The DIME research manual is in English; the training for Research
Assistants was delivered in English; all data collection was conducted in
Lango
• The DIME methodology insists that the research should be conducted in
one language …. restrictive & frustrating for participants?

10. Researching context-sensitive psycho-social
interventions (2)
• Ross’ Blog: “It is important to note that the school that we visited yesterday and
the University we visited today only teach students using English. This highlights
the challenges that health professionals might have [having been] taught in a
language that is not necessarily the first language of the people that they
subsequently treat. I think this serves to highlight the ecological validity
and potential utility of the research that we are conducting.”
• “Discussions with both Richard and Katja have also allowed me to reflect
critically on the methodology that we have been employing and sharpened
my awareness around the points in the process where the use of English
language training has juxtaposed with the use of Lango in the delivery of
interviews and the recording of associated information. I also have to
concede that having Richard and Katja in the team has increased the
amount of Lango that I have been able to pick up.”
•https://rosswhiteblog.wordpress.com/

11. Linguistic Preparation … for Anthropology etc
• Nettl (2005): “This dissertation fieldwork [for graduate programs in
ethnomusicology], which is preceded by cultural and linguistic preparation,
usually involves a year or more of residence in the field venue” (p.6).
• Tremlett (2009): “The experience of researching in a second language is
central to the types of ‘claims’ that can be made in ethnographic fieldwork,
yet the process of language acquisition is barely explored in
anthropological texts” (p.63).
• Beaudry (1997) – language in ethnomusicological fieldwork in which
researcher has insufficient linguistic competence to directly undertake
research in the local languages (use of interpreters/ translators).
• Study Abroad, CMIC/telecollaboration, Military/peacekeeping, Diplomatic,
global health practitioners, business, IC training

12. Translingual Practice (Canagarajah, 2013)
“my aim has been to provide new research insights into the ways in which
mobile semiotic resources are negotiated for meaning in global contact zones,
and also to suggest pedagogical approaches to develop such co-operative
dispositions and performative competence for cosmopolitan relationships”
(p.202)
Our Questions:
If we are alert to the translingual possibilities in the research context, what
are the implications for research planning incl. linguistic preparation?
Maybe a translingual researcher mindset could be nurtured? If so, how?
What happens when plans for research (for a multilingual research context)
flow from a monolingual mindset (or thinking about separate
monolingualisms)?
Linguistic Preparation  TLP  languaging

13. Thinking more about ‘languaging’
‘Languagers’, for us, are those people, we may even term them ‘agents’ or
‘language activists’, who engage with the world-in-action, who move in the
world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of
speaking and attempt to develop different, more relational ways of
interacting with the people and phenomena that one encounters in everyday
life. (p.365)
Phipps, A. (2011).
Travelling languages? Land, languaging and translation,
Language and Intercultural Communication, 11:4, 364-376.
Linguistic Preparation  TLP  languaging

14. Thinking more about ‘languaging’ (2)
A languaging perspective conceptualizes language as a verb (as practice or
behavior), rather than as a noun (a thing or object) and places the activity
and the agents (languagers) in focus rather than the linguistic system
(languages).
The question students of languaging ask themselves is therefore not ‘who
speaks (or writes) what language (or what language variety) to whom, when
and to what end’, as Fishman defined the field sociolinguistics forty years ago,
but ‘who languages how and what is being languaged under what
circumstances in a particular place and time’
Jørgensen & Juffermans (2011)
Languaging
https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/6654/1/Jorgensen%20%26%20Jufferm
ans%202011%20languaging.pdf

15. Thinking more about ‘culturing’
Rodriguez , A. (2002) …. explore the notion that human beings are culturing
beings. I contend that the world’s infinite ambiguity is constantly pushing us
to construct new and different ways of being and understanding the world. I
also argue that verbing our understanding of culture enlarges our
understanding of what being human means and, moreover, expands moral
action by locating our humanity within a world with an inherent moral
potentiality.
Natasa Bakic-Miric: “culturing highlights the …. tensions and contradictions that
define all cultures …. [enabling us to] see the homogeneity and diversity, the stability
and instability, the order and the chaos, and so forth …. [and also to] see the political,
moral, and existential struggles and many contests over meanings, interpretations
and symbols that define all cultures … and ultimately [enable us to] come to
understand that claims of cultural uniformity and stability will always be illusory but
never hopeless.
Brian Street “Culture is a verb”

16. Thinking more about mediators and mediating
• Researchers as mediators of their own – and others’ – linguistic and
cultural repertoires and resources as part of research processes/practice
• … mediating the needs of all those involved in the research through such
languaging and culturing
Maybe a translingual researcher mindset could be nurtured? If so, how?
….e.g. by focusing more on researchers’ preparation for, and habits of mind
regarding, research practice with multilingual potential

17. Researchers as mediators
Researchers might intentionally/purposefully* ….
• bring a languaging-and-culturing mindset to their research activities
• challenge the habit of working only from/with bounded monolingualisms
and cultures etc
• mediate their own linguistic-and-cultural complexities/possibilities as
appropriate for the linguistic-and-cultural complexities/possibilities of
the research(ed) contexts and those within (or interacting with) them
• mediate the linguistic-and-cultural complexities/possibilities of the
research(ed) contexts and those within (or interacting with) them
• mediate the linguistic-and-cultural complexities/possibilities of the wider
research(er) environment (e.g. publication)
* Stelma, J., Fay, R. and Zhou, X. (2013). Developing intentionality and researching
multilingually: An ecological and methodological perspective, International Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 23(3): 300-315.

18. Thank You
Please contact us [any of the RMTC Hub]
with any comments or questions.
jane.andrewsEDU@uwe.ac.uk
richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk

19. ?
?

20. • Parneet – multilingual (English, Hindi, Punjabi), internationally experienced
counselling psychologist working with various languages (English, varieties of
Hindi, Kannada, Urdu) in various contexts with diverse individuals (re language,
culture, etc)
• “I first realised that I could, in the sense of having the permission to, conduct my
Doctoral research multilingually when [my supervisor] explained the way in
which I could handle my multilingual data. Being permitted to present the data in
its original language within the thesis surprised me to the extent of not believing
it at first. At the risk of sounding silly, when addressing the issue about
multilingual data during my mock panel, I became fearful of being asked
questions to which I had not yet found methodological answers and stated the
common practice of translating data into English, thereby reluctantly adopting
the dominant discourse of presenting the English translations and minimising the
focus on the multilingual aspects of the data …”
• Interview with a southern Indian Muslim (with fluency in Kannada, Urdu)
required her to think on her feet re language possibilities (Urdu/Hindi?) and how
she might use an interpreter also …
Illustration 3: Researching life on the street (Parneet Chahal)

21. • Planning for multilingual research – with a monolingual
mindset?
• Monolingual ideologies at play within an education system
(Bonacina, 2012)
• Researcher assumptions regarding language use / choice
between research participants and interpreter (Andrews,
2013)
• Research context as a translingual space – implications for
research planning, linguistic preparation
Illustration 1: Researching learning in multilingual homes